Its jerky walk with the many pauses conveyed more and more a sense of internal discord, of rust and wear, and the deterioration of time. How much time? The four Terrans stepped away from the ship, giving free passage to the strange partners from the tower.
“Robots!” Ross said suddenly. “They’re robots! But what are they going to do?”
“Refuel, I think.” Ashe rather than Renfry answered that.
“You’ve hit it!” The technician pushed forward. “But do they have fuel—now?”
“We’d better hope there is some left.” Ashe sounded bleak. “I’d say we aren’t supposed to stay here—better get back on board.”
The threat of being trapped here, of locked controls raising the ship and leaving them marooned, induced a wave of something close to panic in all three hearers. They raced to the ladder, began to climb. But when they reached the air lock, Renfry remained at the open door, retailing the movements of the robots.
“I think that animated pipeline’s been connected—underneath. Can’t see what the walker’s doing—maybe he just stands by in case of trouble. And there’s something coming through the hose—you can see it swelll We’re taking on whatever we’re supposed to have!”
“A fueling station.” Ashe looked out over the wide stretch of crumbling towers and checkerboard landing spaces. “But see the size of this place. It must have been constructed to handle hundreds, even thousands, of ships. And since they couldn’t all be in to refuel at the same time, that predisposes a fleet”—he drew a deep breath of wonder—"a fleet almost beyond comprehension. We were right—this civilization was galaxy-wide. Maybe it spread to the next galaxy.”
But Travis’ eyes rested on the splintered cap of the tower from which the robots had come. “By the looks no one has been here for some time,” he observed.
“Machines,” Renfry answered, “will go on working until they run down. I’d say that walking one down there is close to its final stop. We triggered some impulse when we landed on the right spot. The robots were activated to do their job-maybe their last job. How long since they worked the last time? This may have kept going for a long part of that twelve thousand years you’re always talking about—an empire dying slowly. But I wouldn’t try to measure the time. These aliens knew machinery, and their alloys are better than our best.”
“I’d like to see the interior of one of those towers.” Ashe said wistfully. “Maybe they kept records, had something we could understand to explain it all.”
Renfry shook his head. “Wouldn’t dare try it. We might raise before you got inside the door. Ahh—the walker is going back now. I’d say get ready for take-off.”
Thev made tight the open port, the inner door of the space lock. Renfry, out of habit, went on up to the control cabin. But the other three took to their bunks. There was a waiting period and then once more the blast into space. This time they did not lose consciousness and endured until they were once more in space.
“Now what?” Hours later they squeezed into the mess cabin to hold a rather aimless conference concerning the future. Since no one had anything more than guesses to offer, none of them answered Renfry’s question.
“I read a book once,” Ross said suddenly with the slightly embarrassed air of one admitting to a minor social error, “that had a story in it about some Dutch sea captain who swore he’d get around the horn in one of those old-time sailing ships. He called up the Devil to help him and he never got home-just went on sailing through the centuries.”
“The Flying Dutchman,” Ashe identified.
“Well, we haven’t called up any Devil,” Renfry remarked.
“Haven’t we?” Travis had spoken his thoughts, without realizing until they all stared at him that he had done so aloud.
“Your Devil being?” Ashe prompted.
“We were trying to get knowledge out of this ship— and it wasn’t our kind of knowledge,” he floundered a little, attempting to put into words what he now believed.
Scavengers getting their just deserts?” Ashe summed up. “If you follow that line of reasoning, yes, you have a point. The forbidden fruit of knowledge. That was an idea planted so long ago in mankind’s conscience that it lingers today as guilt.”
“Planted,” Ross repeated the word thoughtfully, “planted.
“Planted!” Travis echoed, his mind making one of those odd jumps in sudden understanding of which he had only recently become conscious. “By whom?”
Then glancing around at the alien ship which was both their transport and their prison, he added softly, “By these people?”
“They didn’t want us to know about them.” Ross’s words came in a rush. “Remember what they did to that Red time base—traced it all the way forward and destroyed it in every era. Suppose they did have contacts with primitive man on our world—planted ideas—or gave them such a terrifying lesson at one time or other that the memory of it was buried in all their descendants?”
“There are other tales beside your Flying Dutchman, Ross,” Ashe squirmed a little in his seat. None of the chairs in the ship was exactly fitted to the human frame or provided comfort for the modern passengers. “Prometheus and the fire—the man who dared to steal the knowledge of the gods for the use of mankind and suffered eternally thereafter for his audacity, though his fellows benefited. Yes, there are clues to back such a theory, faint ones.” His eagerness grew as he spoke. “Maybe—just maybe—we’ll find out!”
“The supply port was long deserted,” Travis pointed out. “There may be nothing left of their empire anywhere.”
“Well, we’ve not found the home port yet.” Renfry got to his feet. “Once we set down there—I hadn’t intended to say this, but if we ever get to the end of this trip, there’s a chance we may get back, providing—” He drummed his fingers against the door casing. “Providing we have more than our share of luck.”
“How?” demanded Ashe.
“The controls must now be set with some sort of a guide-perhaps a tape. Once we are grounded and I can get to work, that might just be reversed. But there are a hundred ‘ifs’ between us and earth, and we can’t count on anything.”
“There’s this, too,” Ashe added thoughtfully to that faintest of hopes. “I’ve been studying the material we have found. If we can crack their language tapes—some of the records we have discovered here must deal with the maintenance and operation of the ship.”
“And where in space are you going to find a Rosetta Stone?” returned Travis. He did not dare to believe that either of the two discoveries might be possible. “No common word heritage.”
“Aren’t mathematics supposed to be the same, no matter what language? Two and two always add to four, and sums such as that?” puzzled Ross.
“Please find me some symbols on any of those tapes you’ve been running through the reader that have the smallest resemblance to any numbers seen on earth.” Renfry had swung back to the pessimistic side of the balance. “Anyway—I’m not meddling with the machines in that control cabin while we’re still in space.”
Still in space—how long were they going to keep on voyaging? And somehow they found this second lap of their journey into nowhere worse than the first had been. All of them had been secretly convinced that there was only one goal, that their first star port would be their last. But the short pause to refuel now promised a much longer trip. Their only way of telling time was by the hours marked on the dial of Renfry’s watch. Days—Ashe made a record of those by counting hours. It was one week since they had left the fuel port—two days more.